The CircThread project, led and coordinated by CARTIF, is one year old and to celebrate it has organised its first face-to-face General Assembly on 7 an 8 June at the Centre’s facilities in the Boecillo Techbology Park (Valladolid, Spain). A session in which the 31 European partners from 12 different countries will meet for the first time since its inception to share the work and outline the next steps to be taken in the coming years.
It is an ambitious European framework initiative that aims to transform the understanding of the circular economy as applied to wired appliances. Thanks to is digital platform, CircThread will collect data on products, parts, materials, etc. This will enable managers and amunfacturers to assess the circularity of their products and extend their lifespan. In addition, users of these appliances and citizen organisations will be given access to this information in order to know th performance of their products and empower their decision making.
Through the “digital circular thread” methodology (hence the name of the project: Circ, from circular and Thread from digital thread) its facilities information flow exchanges along the extended life cycle chain of a wide range of products related to environmental, social, economy and circular information.
This new proposal aims to create data links between products chain, value chain, asset chain and life cycle chains. This is based on a catalogue of product information that enables these exchanges through data contracts governed by secure and reliable management standards.
This project will implement a data exchange platform in 3 demonstration clusters (in Italy, Slovenia and Spain) on household appliances, including washing machines and dishwashers, and household energy systems, such as boilers, solar PV systems and batteries. 7 circularity use cases and associated business models will be tested.
The general benefits that the CircThread project is working towards are based on:
- Extending the lifetime of products through a better understanding of in-use problems and maintenance needs.
- Analysis of the quality of end-of-life products for the purchase of spare parts, and supporting the right to repair.
- Improve the evaluation of circularity routes by waste management and recycling companies through the provision of improved product composition data.
- Improved screening of materials and chemicals in products and components to make them safer and to identify critical raw material cycles.
- Empower the decision of citizens and citizen organisations by providing direct access to product performance information.